


Warmth

by BookThievery



Series: moon's clockwork dream [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, and warning for the thenardiers, there's no explicit abuse but there are vague mentions of it, trigger warning for suicidal thoughts, uh warning for suicidal thoughts on eponine's part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookThievery/pseuds/BookThievery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eponine ponders the river, and an angel saves her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> Modern au, inspired by the line in the brick about Eponine considering drowning herself in the river. No romantic interaction just yet - it was labeled mature mostly because hey, suicide and thoughts of it is kind of a big deal.
> 
> (also I'm like really shy about posting things but hello everyone)

The river looks inviting, in all truthfulness. The water rushes by, lit only by the moonlight, disturbed only by one of Eponine’s feet which skims the top of the water as she kicks it back and forth. It’s freezing cold. Eponine’s feet are bare, her clothes aren’t much of clothes, her life is in tatters –

(was her life ever really in one piece?)

\-- and she needs to sleep, and she wants to swim. She wants to swim forever and sleep forever. It wouldn’t be so hard, really, to push with her arms, slide her bottom from where she’s sitting, and plunge into the river, with no more worries to her, and no more pain. No more poverty. No more living on the streets. No more going home to face her parents, no more being forced to take parts in their awful schemes, no more being used by people who claimed to love her but then made her do terrible, awful things, just for them to feed her.

Eponine dips her toes into the water. It’s so very cold.

The cold of the water gives her pause, and the pause is enough for her savior to arrive.

Cosette settles beside her without a word. Oh, Cosette, an angel of light, the lark, her friend.

(‘Friend’ is a strange word to be applied to Eponine, she thinks. The closest thing to a friend she has is Cosette, but she’s seen some of Cosette and Marius’s friends, and she doesn’t believe she’ll ever have a friendship like that.)

“What are you doing out so late?” Cosette murmurs. Her feet don’t quite reach the surface of the river. She’s shorter than Eponine is. Her feet are clad in white slippers. They look warm.

They would be a sight to see, if anyone else decided to walk by the river in the early hours of the morning. Cosette, dressed in a pale yellow nightgown, with a white ribbon holding her hair back, next to Eponine, dressed in a shirt that was once white and tattered jeans, nothing holding her wild and messy hair back.

Cosette knows more about Eponine than anyone. She knows what the Thénardiers are like. She lived with them until she was eight, as a worker, a maid, no better than a slave to them. And then Valjean had come in and fought for custody and won, and then Cosette was gone, out of Eponine’s life.

Eponine is jealous of her. The feeling burns in her gut, dark branches of something evil that had taken root when Valjean bought Cosette the doll that Eponine had been asking for for weeks, that only grew when Cosette ran into her a year ago, and suddenly their positions had switched.

When Cosette is there, however, she finds it hard to feel the branches and roots scratching around her soul. Seeing Cosette does not water these roots. Seeing Cosette does nothing but make her forget, for a little while, because Cosette is light and beauty and good, and it’s hard to feel any negative emotion against her when she’s there.

“I don’t want to go home.” Eponine whispers in reply.

Cosette doesn’t ask why. She knows. She reaches over and grabs one of Eponine’s dirty hands – hands that had been rooting in the trash earlier to find food for Gavroche and Azelma. Cosette’s hand is completely clean. They are both silent for a long time, so long that Eponine wants to ask the other woman if she’s real. That this isn’t her mind playing tricks on her before she plunges into the river.

“What about you?” Eponine asks finally, turning to look at Cosette. She looks deep in thought, her eyes staring out over the river. The breeze catches her hair, dragging it softly away from her face. The breeze makes Eponine shiver, and that’s when Cosette turns to look at her, too.

Then she murmurs something that makes Eponine feel like she’s shattering. (Somehow it feels like a good sort of shatter.)

“What?”

Cosette’s eyes don’t leave hers. “Come live with me.”

Her immediate thought is, _There is a God, and he loves me_ , because she’s still half contemplating plunging into the river, and then he’s given her another way out, a way out that is not the death of a soul. A way out that is not nearly as cold as the river is.

But then she thinks about her mother and father, and what they would do if Eponine never returned home. Would they go after Cosette and Valjean? They had in the past – they’re coming up on the anniversary of when Cosette ran at her in the park, surprised and amazed that it was really her. Shortly after, The male Thénardier had devised a terrible plan to get more money out of Valjean – Valjean who already gave the poor money, who had given Thénardier the coat off of his back, and how they’d dragged Eponine into it, how she’d had to help.

(and how Eponine almost enjoyed it, as if it was revenge on this man for taking Cosette and not taking her with. She hates herself for that.)

It was a sick, twisted form of revenge, because Valjean took Cosette. And they’d never cared for Cosette at all, only for the money her mother could send them.

Eponine had become little more than a servant to them now, but they’d cared about her once (hadn’t they?) and she was valuable.

The thought of just being a charity case crosses her mind, but she knows they wouldn’t take someone into their home forever. They’d give her money, or clothes, or offer her a job in one of the factories Valjean owns. They would invite her to stay a night. Cosette would not invite her to stay forever if a charity case was all she was.

“My parents…”

Cosette takes both of Eponine’s hands in hers and looks at her. “Please.”

It’s not a question.

“ _Please_ , ‘Ponine.”

Cosette knows what the Thénardiers can and will do. She’d spent eight years of her life with them, living in the dirty, ruined clothes that couldn’t fit Eponine or Azelma, cleaning up after them, having to live with beatings when she did something wrong. She knows exactly what she is doing, inviting Eponine to live with them. She knows exactly what she is bringing on.

Cosette is a girl who grew up abused, and then who grew up loved. She appears to everyone as a sweet, naïve girl, quiet, lovely, and kind. This is true – except for the naïve part of that. She is a barefoot adventurer, tougher than stone and just as strong as it, capable of being kind with one word and vicious with another. She is not a dove, as Marius calls her. She is a lark.

The river still looks inviting.

“The water’s far too cold and you are far too good to go for a swim.” Cosette whispers. The words curl around her, first a comfort, and then they tangle around her heart, and because she _knows_ , Eponine recoils in shame. She tears her hands from Cosette’s clean, warm ones, and thinks, _I am a devil who is ruining an angel_ , and she ignores how cold her hands are.

But Cosette is having none of that – she wraps her arms around Eponine’s shoulders instead, and pulls her close, not a care for how the dirt on Eponine is going to ruin her pretty nightgown. She holds her there, both of them trembling, Cosette in fear and Eponine with shame.

“Come home with me,” Cosette murmurs, her breath against Eponine’s ear. “You can clean yourself up, we’ll get you clothes, a job, you could go to school if you want, please, ‘Ponine, please.” Her voice breaks on the nickname.

Eponine doesn’t reply. They sit in silence for a very long time, and then Cosette rises to her feet and brings Eponine with her, and turns toward her home, still grasping Eponine’s hands. She holds onto the hands so tightly it hurts, as if she’s terrified that Eponine will crumble if she, for one second, lets go.

They wander through the streets, and somewhere along the way, Cosette begins talking. About school, about her father, about her house and how Eponine will love it there.

Valjean is sound asleep when they get there, laying on the sofa with a blanket thrown over him and an open book beside him. They sneak past him and to the stairs, which creak underneath their feet. Cosette giggles and presses a finger to Eponine’s mouth in a ‘ _shhh_ ’ gesture, and Eponine smiles at her. They’re like children, keeping a precious secret.

Upstairs, Cosette opens the door on the left which is decidedly not her own room. “This can be your room.” She whispers, opening the door.

It opens with a long creak, and Cosette flicks on the light.

The room is painted light blue, with a well-made bed against the wall and a window beside it. It has a desk and a computer chair, both white, and a rug in the middle of the room. There’s a white nightstand with a fancy green lamp on it. There’s a thin layer of dust over everything.

“It’s a guest room,” Cosette says. “but not anymore. Now, come on,” And she tugs Eponine across the hall into Cosette’s room, which is decidedly brighter and more of a home.

Her walls are a pale pink color, her desk is stained with all sorts of colors, and the top is messy and disorganized, a laptop buried under piles of homework and folders. On her chair is some pajamas. Her bedspread is floral print – a gift from Jehan – and she has a few stuffed animals sitting on her bed, and her rug is fluffy and white, with a big purple stain in the middle of it and a brown stain on the corner, right by her bed. The walls are decorated with photographs and drawings of different things. The window is cracked open.

Cosette lets go of Eponine. She sits on the bed. Cosette starts rooting around her dresser, mumbling things about how it’s far too cold to be wearing rags, and how they can go shopping this weekend and buy her her own things, and how she’ll talk to her dad in the morning, and completely confirm that she is staying.

“Here!” Cosette turns around when she finds the light green nightgown she’d been looking for (Eponine had once told her that she liked green) only to find Eponine asleep, curled on her side facing the wall, with a bright pink stuffed rabbit tucked under her chin.

Eponine looks more at peace asleep than she ever has awake.

Cosette sets the nightgown on top of the dresser and slips off her shoes. She crawls into her own bed in the space between Eponine and the wall and curls around her, happy and sleepy and content.

Right before she drifts off, she hears Eponine say, “Why were you out tonight?” Cosette has to strain to hear her, even with Eponine so close.

Cosette gives her all the answer she has.

“I felt like I was needed.”

Valjean finds them curled around each other the next morning, no blanket over them, and that stuffed rabbit lying between them. He throws a quilt over them and lets them sleep.


End file.
